For the last Month I have been training at altitude in the beautiful Swiss alpine town that is St Moritz. This training camp concluded with a Castle Series race in France on my way back to the UK.

The period in St Moritz was hugely useful for me to claw back some decent fitness after my slow start to the season. To have a long period of time under the watchful eye of my coach, Perry Agass, is invaluable with regard to my fitness and technique. My swimming and cycling certainly came on in the 4 weeks and my running rehab after injury continued to progress well.

As I said, this extended time in Switzerland was invaluable and it couldn't have happened without the generous support I receive from ETE and Pedal Potential, for which I am very grateful.​

RACE REPORT

The penultimate Castle Series race was in Chantilly, France taking place mostly around the grounds of the Chateau.

Despite a heavy training block I was feeling reasonably fresh and ready to race. I arrived with ETE team mate Matt Leeman, on Friday night after a 10 hour car journey and the only restaurant open was a domino-esque pizza place... not ideal but we had no other option. Saturday was quite chilled just sorting bikes, registering, checking out the event site and a pre- race ride and run. Everything was well in our World.

We woke up at 5am and headed over to the Chateau. The sky was looking ominous but we were too engulfed in the result of the Mayweather vs McGregor fight to pay any attention. Once this was over, our focus shifted to the race and 30 minutes before the start, the rain began to fall. accompanied by a couple of lighting strikes. Again, not ideal for racing but the conditions are the conditions. I found a tree to hide under to change into my wetsuit and swiftly headed over to race start where it was evident my race was to be delayed as the backmarkers of the previous wave were still scattered around the multi loop swim course. After a bit of a wait my wave kicked off and I was swimming well. The 1500m swim went by pretty quickly with no dramas to report, a solid swim for me coming out the water around 1.5 min back on the leaders. In T1 I briefly lost my bearings after accidentally running into a marshal, but I found my bike and was seamlessly away. Starting the bike alone is something I am used to, so as always, I put my head down and began my 30mile TT effort. The course was undulating with no hills meaning it was relatively fast. I saw the 3 leaders together coming in the other direction to me after a turnaround point, they all looked strong, but I did my best to catch them regardless. The rain had made some of the roundabouts a little dangerous and led to Matt crashing and eventually having to DNF. I had my fair share of sketchy moments but I managed to stay upright and ended up averaging 26.1 MPH for the 30mile bike course which is a good ride in a Tri for me. 15 seconds off the fastest bike split meant I had made up a little time to the leaders when starting the run. This was always going to be where the real test was as I had been rehabbing a relatively long term injury. Fortunately in the race this didn't bother me, but it was clear my running form was not where it used to be. The run was more about surviving than my usual hunting, but I managed to hold my position and crossed the line in 4th having been beaten by better guys on the day.... Chapeau!